I was fortunate to meet with Penelope Scambly Schott shortly after her most recent book, the historical narrative A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth (Turning Point Books) won the 2008 Oregon Book Award for poetry. Schott is widely published, and her credits include a novel, four chapbooks and six full-length books poetry. She’s also worked as a donut maker in a cider mill, a home health aide, an artist’s model, and a college professor. After talking baseball – she grew up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and as a girl used to stay up with her family to listen to games in Los Angeles – we launched into various ways her inquisitive spirit informs her work. Of course her inquisitive nature prompted Penelope to interview me at the onset. Part 2 of our interview will appear later in 2009.

(DJ): It’s a joy to have these conversations. I’m starting to see that I’m seeking as much as wanting to communicate answers to other people.

(PS): I did that for a while. I have in a folder in my filing cabinet called “Friendship Project”. I was trying to understand other people, partly to see if I was weird. Sometimes you look at the furniture in your head and you think, “Hmm, I wonder if anyone else is living with this?”

I went around and asked a whole lot of people two things. One, what do you think about when you’re not thinking about something else? Is there something you return to? And the other thing was, what connects you to your friends. People were completely dumbfounded by these questions. I never got good answers to what’s in your head.

(DJ): Really?

(PS): Well, what’s in your head?

(DJ): Well, as soon as you said that…

(PS): You did a snapshot of the moment…

(DJ): I think about baseball. I don’t know why I come back to this because I was a pitcher, but I see myself in the batter’s box, trying to drive the ball to right-center field. After about age 12, hitting wasn’t my strong point. Sometimes I work on it in my head. Sometimes I swing and miss. Sometimes I connect. It plays like a four-second loop. Swing, drive, start to run, head back…swing, drive, head back.

(PS): Once you hit it you know it’s going to go…

(DJ): Yes and no. I don’t know what happens to the ball. What I should really do is stay on the ball for a while.

As for what connects me to my friends…I just had an old friend out here, a guy I’ve known since I was eight. No matter how much you change, there’s always that thing that calls you back. These old friends who share the old town stories, I feel connected through a deeply embedded emotion like a rock holding water. The water is safe inside the rock. It’s still but it’s fluid, even with an encasement around it. The water doesn’t know anything outside of the rock. But it’s OK in there. It’s not missing anything. I’m over here chasing poets around. My friend’s in Philadelphia living his life. We’re held together by the water inside the rock.

(PS): That’s nice.

(DJ): So this inquisitiveness within you…between your historical and lyric books, how does does it affect and guide you down different paths, one toward research, the other toward self discovery?

(PS): Why should I answer? You gave a wonderful answer. (laughter)

I was a history major as an undergraduate. If I’d come along a little later, once history broadened out from wars and statistics and into peoples’ lives, I would have gone on in history. I look at everything in a kind of chronological way. When I’m looking out at the street here and I see what’s driving by, there’s this sort of film in my mind that runs the buildings backwards, changes cars to horse drawn and so forth. What I see doesn’t just exist as itself in the moment. It’s all in a process of change, as if everything is on a continuum. We’re all on this continuum.

I’m fascinated to take a story that has been squelched or lost and try to move backwards into understanding what it might really have been like. When I’m writing about somebody, my mind’s in a room that’s filled with the furniture of that era, the food of that era, the ambient sound of that era. That’s the kind of research I do until I feel I can hear the person.

(DJ): You delve in.

(PS): All three of my narrative books have bibliographies. I immerse myself in everything I can find. The book about Anne Hutchinson for instance…

(DJ): Congratulations by the way.

(PS): Thank you. I’m pleased for two reasons. One, I believe she deserves attention. And I’m pleased because it proves I’m now an Oregonian, after having come from elsewhere. (Laughter)

It was only when I started reading the transcripts of her trial that I felt I could hear her voice. And the word that I hate to use, because it sounds too “new agey,” is channeling. But I really felt that I knew her the way you would know a friend, and would be able to guess what the friend would think or say or do. My curiosity took me there.

In terms of standard lyric poetry…among other things, I’ve never been bored. If you look at anything, and you REALLY look at it, it gets very interesting. Sit here and look at these chairs. They were in someone’s house. Who knows what the deal was with these chairs? They all have lives. Sometimes, when I look at the world…it’s very interesting to me.

I’m a woman who’s getting on in age. You’re a young man. Isn’t it interesting that people are different ages? Different genders? I’m sitting here having this conversation with you. You’re younger than my son, but it’s the kind of conversation I may have with him. So every constellation of the moment astonishes me. If I had to use one word to describe my attitude in life, it would be “amazed.”

Look at these three trees (motions out the window). That one still has its leaves. That one has places with leaves. And that one on the corner, it has licorice fern growing on it. Right in town!

(DJ): Most people would just walk by.

(PS): Everything stops me dead in my tracks. That’s what happens. And…you know this as a writer, it’s a blessing and a curse.

I’m not going to go see the new James Bond movie. Even though it’s James Bond, and the violence is cartoonish of sorts, I really can’t stand it. It’s like I don’t have thick enough skin. When I was a kid, people used to tell me, “Well, you’re too sensitive!” And I think most writers are “too” sensitive – put “too” in quotes.

(DJ): I think you’re right. A lot of writers are “too” sensitive. And I mean that in a positive sense. It allows us to channel the emotion that’s out there, that people are walking underneath. And it makes me wonder – there are more and more writers and less and less readers…

(PS): We have to read each other.

(DJ): How do you feel about that? You’re going through life as you. You’re summoning whatever it is you’re summoning, which you then direct into your work. In the end you’re writing for yourself – we have to be writing for ourselves…

(PS): If I was on a desert island with paper and pencil I’d be alright. And I love language. I love words.

(DJ): Do you think about the masses or majority walking by? Whether these things you’ve pointed out go under their radar, and what does that say about their interest, their curiosity…

(PS): Well, I think there’s a tribe of us who do see those things. Those are the people I’m speaking to. A lot of people are so busy having stimulus come in at them, that are not the natural world. Going around with earbuds…or the television is always “at” them. It doesn’t leave quite enough room for your own thoughts to grow. I think that people who are out “being entertained” by something all the time – you need to see a movie a day, make sure to see your favorite shows, whatever it is – then what you are connecting with are the thoughts of the people who created those shows. And there’s a certain amount of stillness that you have carry within you to notice what’s in your immediate world as opposed to your media world.

Penelope Scambly Schott’s publishing credits include a novel, four chapbooks and six full-length books of poetry. Schott has received the 2004 Turning Point Poetry Prize, the Orphic Prize, and a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her most recent book, the verse biography A Is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, won the 2008 Oregon Book Award for poetry. She resides in Portland, Oregon, where she writes, paints and hikes. The following poems are featured here with the poet’s permission.

FLYING EAST FOR MY GRANDSON’S BIRTH
      from May the Generations Die in the Right Order, Main Street Rag, publisher

And I’m sailing in high silver over Pendleton and Bozeman
as you journey the last hard inches toward the sill of the pubis.

At 33,000 feet, the outside temperature, according to the screen
and these frost flowers blooming here on the window by my seat,
is minus 59 degrees Fahrenheit.

Council Bluffs and the rectangular plains marking buffalo bones
in late snow. Now the thick MIssissippi twists like an umbilical,
and the cord, coiled through generations, tightens my groin.

Push, they told me, and what else could I do, my back cracking
over the rim of the world?

                        At the darkening edge of the continent,
she is breathing and sweating. Let somebody’s cool hand
sweep damp hair from her forehead.

As I pass over Cincinnati, she is opening in waves and scarlet
birth blood is flowing through us all. East now of Pittsburgh
she is riding her moment of I can’t do this any more, the body
almost inverting itself, and clouds rushing under my wings,
until the lift and gasp in the moving air.

Sometimes we call this
landing.

Child, I will tell you every glorious thing I know:
We are made out of dirt and water. Someday your hands
will have freckles and lines. Many cherished people
have lived and died before you.

Oh, and child, one thing more:
this earth invents us and consorts with us willingly
only because we tell stories.

CONSOLE ME
         from May the Generations Die in the Right Order

The white-faced cattle turning aside
their wide heads–

the afternoons are long catastrophes,
each sunset breakable.

Behind white railings of porches,
shadows fracture;

no one descends the steps.

All night,
during and during and during,

my cheek wrinkles
on a cool pillowcase.

The peace of pain: to expect nothing
and get it,

until all I recall about comfort

is a flock of birds
on the one flat spot in the ocean.

THE BIRDS OF SORROW
         from Baiting the Void, Dream Horse Press, publisher

Stand too long in tall grass,
and they will build their nests
in your uncombed hair.
With small twigs,

they will pick, pick at your scalp until
they unweave your cap of misgivings,
and give you up to pure despair.
A thousand sorrows

swoop and hover over bent grass.
For every clump of grass,
there are many sorrows
and each sorrow

is named sorrow or bunch-grass
or flyaway-grass or broken thing.
Winds rise until your eyes burn.
The round

black eyes of a meadowlark,
slit eyes of a barred owl,
shut and open,
open and shut.

Around you in frozen grasses
the feathers fall, unpreened.
You may say shroud
or yes, white birds,

come peck my eyes blind.

EXTRA INNINGS WITHOUT MY MOTHER
         from Baiting the Void

The spotted backs of your hands, smooth
as the palm of a catcher’s mitt, thump
of a called strike. We are two teammates
in an old game: the game of getting old.
How restful this scuffed field, the sagging
scoreboard. I need never be glamorous
of spiffy or sophisticated, never get rich.
I need only become your orphan up here
in the bleachers like the crotch of a tree,
peanut skins drifting to the dugout roof.

When I try to describe how safe I’ll be,
I remember the white backs of her hands,
her slim fingers, towers of golden rings,
two strikes against me, my rough slide
home. Now I am stacking the top half
of a peanut shell, lid of a sarcophagus
expectant in the great museum, empty,
though inlaid with topaz.

David Horowitz, writer and head of Rose Alley Press was minding his booth at Wordstock when I stopped by and introduced myself. He was about to release his newest book, Stars Beyond the Battlesmoke, and we spoke briefly about Rose Alley as well as his work. During our interview a few weeks later, I learned that beyond the duties of the creating and publishing, Horowitz works full-time for a downtown Seattle law firm, and devotes additional hours to tending to the needs of his elderly mother. Only then does he sit down to handle the duties of publishing and the demands of the writing life. Part one of our interview focuses on the challenges of publishing, personal integrity and begins to get into his craft as a writer. Part two will appear later in the year. You can read his work on the Rose Alley author page.

(DJ): Between your work as a writer and managing Rose Alley, what struggles do you encounter trying to honor both, and where do you feel there may be some overlap?

(DH): There is overlapping – big time – for me. I’m not fundamentally a commercial publisher. I’m not somebody who’s going to publish something to make money, and then say, “OK, now I have to get to my serious art.” That’s not the way I work. What I publish is what I consider to be my serious art. I’ll take whatever losses come with trying to get it out there.

I don’t have a commercial line and an aesthetic line. The aesthetic line is it. So it’s a tough sell. But it does give me, personally, a lot of energy and sense of commitment to the press, because I’m publishing stuff I really want to sell. I’m not feeling half-hearted about selling it. There’s a strong sense of energized, sincere commitment that you gain by being a purely aesthetic publisher as opposed to publishing something you don’t particularly believe in just to make some money.

Now, there are ways in which the publishing impinges on my own creativity. Publishing is not glamorous. It is often very foolishly stereotyped as something that is glamorous or that entails activities performed by king-making, wealthy people and that kind of nonsense. I don’t make much money in terms of my overall intake, and I lose money as a publisher. But I’m very committed to it.

What impinges is the constant publicity that a small publisher has to do in order to promote the work sufficiently. That means readings, which includes producing fliers for each reading because you have to. People aren’t just going to go to a reading because it’s a reading. There might be 15 or 20 readings on a given night in Seattle. You have to get out there and promote. That’s time consuming. I’d rather spend my time doing research or writing poems. Sending out emails can get old, but it’s something you have to do if you want to sell books. You’ve got to commit to producing good looking work and promotional materials that make people believe this is solid stuff. The editing of brochures, the creation and distribution of email fliers…it’s not glamorous. I’d rather be doing other things sometimes, but it’s necessary. That’s probably the biggest conflict right there.

If there is overlapping, in an odd way, it’s that the socializing you do at a book fair or with your fellow writers can help create a sense of literary community that would otherwise not exist. You deepen your sense of commitment because you all understand you’re in a difficult marketplace. You get a deeper appreciation for one another’s struggles, which deepens your sense of community and commitment to one another. That’s a pleasure. It alleviates that sense of arduous loneliness that can often attend to the publisher’s responsibilities.

(DJ): I love that language…”arduous loneliness…”

(DH): It can be that way. You’re staying up till three or four in the morning sending out email messages and you have to be at work three hours later. It’s that kind of field.

(DJ): Jumping into some of your poems then . . . there’s the final line in the poem, “No Given”:

“Integrity must battle to survive,
In shadowed lunar scene must sharpen sight.”

Could you jump into that line and flash it back toward your work? Especially having heard you say what you said, and visualizing this poem taking place as a scene, it’s as if we each encounter that moment when we’re thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if we were off doing this, but my integrity keeps me here.” How does that align with everything you just told me?

(DH): I value that poem highly. I don’t tend to write what you might call “statement poems” all that often, but this is kind of a statement poem.

“Integrity must battle to survive.” Yes. That epitomizes, really, the struggle of the principled artist in a corrupt word. The last line is an attempt to soften, a little bit, the potential for finger wagging sanctimony when one urges integrity as a moral ideal. In a sense, “Integrity must battle to survive.” Because, the line before it: “Day’s bribe, threat, and deceit still live–no, thrive.” That’s what you’re faced with.

Here’s an example. I never violate privacy in order to sell. In the world though, that stuff does go on. It’s amazing how much privacy is violated to find out people’s buying habits. Then stuff comes back through that data and now people think they have a better chance to sell to you. Sometimes it’s done above board and sometimes it’s not. I won’t do that. I’d rather starve than violate people’s privacy to find out their buying habits. I’ll take my chances on being an honest person. That’s not necessarily everybody’s approach. Some could care less about privacy. All kinds of databases and lists are gathered by questionable means.

The line, “In shadowed lunar scene must sharpen sight.” Well the “shadowed lunar scene” is a kind of penumbral reality . . . the penumbral moral decision making we have to face. It’s tough sometimes to know what integrity means. It’s tough to make decisions. Sometimes people who might seem good aren’t good. Sometimes people are angry but they have a good reason for anger. Or they don’t have good reason. It’s difficult to know. It’s rarely absolutely clear just what integrity does entail. On one hand, I have a strong sense of integrity. By the same token, I want to emphasize with the last line that making decisions that inhere of integrity is often tough. It can be tricky.

There are two places I will never compromise on integrity, ever, in any shape or form. One being, the art itself. You’ve got to say what you’ve got to say. You can’t sit there and worry if something’s going to be popular. You can’t go there. I say what I really think needs to be said. Number two, the basic morality, as a publisher at least, of selling. Not cheating people, not manipulating people, no baiting and switching, spying on their computer habits…none of that garbage.

(DJ): Regarding your integrity to the art itself, I’m reminded of our first conversation when we discussed your adherence to form. I’m curious about your drafting process, since your final versions are so particular to the form that you hope to convey. As you explained, there’s something in the form that in a way creates more beauty. What do your first drafts look like?

(DH) A couple of points. First, I call myself a rhyme addict. I will frequently start poems with what I call “rhyme seeds.” A rhyme strikes me as being particularly strong, and I write it down. Then, some kind of, often, very metrical line hits me. And I have an epigram…a two-liner or a four-liner. Sometimes I feel it has everything I need to say. Sometimes I feel it doesn’t. Then I really work more with a kind of putty. I’ll have a couplet or quatrain that’s pretty strict or finished, but if I don’t feel it has everything that needs to be said, I work more with drafts that have less metrical lines, maybe have off-rhymes that are really more off than I wanted, or images that are a little too nascent. So I often start with a rhyme-originated couplet or quatrain that helps me generate another few quatrains or lines that are less well-formed.

I’m also kind of an artistic libertarian. I believe everyone should be writing what they really want to write. If they’re not comfortable in form, I’m not going to berate a person for being some kind of inferior poet. There are a lot of really good free verse writers and a lot of bad formalists. I hesitate to embrace form as a kind of adjunct to a political dogma. By the same token, I’m not afraid to announce my presence. I do love rhyme and meter, and I do so unabashedly. I hope not dogmatically, but unabashedly.

I think of poetry as the intersection of language and music. Form, specifically rhyme and meter, helps convey the musical sense to the words you’re using. Form can especially help with witty poetry. It helps sharpen the sense of atmosphere, mood, tone, resonance – obviously consonants, alliteration, lots of rhetorical devices help do that too, but rhyme and meter, especially when they’re used in particular cases and not just generically, give a lot to a poem.

Consider the most basic, elementary example, which is Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” It’s not iambic. It’s trochaic. Think about the Native American subject matter. If you go iambic, you’re going, “bum BUM bum BUM bum BUM bum BUM.” Trochaic is the inverse. You’re going, “BUM bum BUM bum BUM bum BUM bum.” It’s the perfect sound of an Indian drum. So the shift of the meter changes the mood and tone of how the language is conveyed. If it were iambic, you wouldn’t get much of a sense of Native American drumming or rhythm. Trochaic – that is so perfectly chosen. That’s just one example, but there are many of using form not just as a rational structure or generic default because you don’t have the creative energy to think individually, but instead to reflect the theme, tone and emotions in the writing. It’s a wonderful tool to do that.

David D. Horowitz founded and manages Rose Alley Press. His newest collection, Stars Beyond the Battlesmoke, was released in November of 2008, and his previous collections include Wildfire, Candleflame; Resin from the Rain; and Streetlamp, Treetop, Star. His poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, and he gives frequent readings in and around Seattle, where he lives. In 2005, Horowitz won the PoetsWest Achievement Award. In 2007, he edited, as well as published, the Rose Alley Press anthology: Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range.

Cure

These headlines sear and spear and scald.
They spurt such bloody violence
His seasoned heart still feels appalled
To worried saddened silence.

He’s heard of panaceas, saviors,
The Prophet’s signs. They make him wince.
Not snide, yet not naive, he favors
A balance tuned from long experience.

Into Monday

Dusk’s saffron-ruby smoke above the mountain range
   Greys weekend into distance.
Pines print consistency on silhouetted change
   And blacken in persistence
Through night. Dawn blazes, then extinguishes, the lamps,
Lake’s silver silence beaming shaky scarlet lance
   And freshly lit existence.
Soon deadlines govern dreams, and sky turns plainly blue.
Most hurry to their job, ignore the window view.

Sparrow

I’m an ounce
Of flit and bounce,
An inch
Of hop and flinch.
I chirp and chatter,
Perch and scatter,
Alert, still.
The world can kill
And think it doesn’t matter.

No Given

Pine, spruce project on twilight’s ruby screen
As lamps define arterials and streets,
And freeways flow commuters home. Rose streaks
Stretch opal stratosphere to starry skein,

And data, deadlines, details fade to night.
Day’s bribe, threat, and deceit still live–no, thrive.
Integrity must battle to survive,
In shadowed lunar scene must sharpen sight.

As much as Peter Sears gets jazzed by his own work, he’s equally excited – if not more – by the prospects of helping writers at all levels find the line or turn the phrase they’re shooting for. Born in New York, Sears has taught at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Reed College, Bard College, and is on the faculty of Pacific University’s MFA in Writing program. In addition, he has led countless independent and affiliated workshops. His work has been widely published and has appeared in The Atlantic, Zyzzyva, Northwest Review, Rolling Stone, Southern Poetry Review, Mother Jones, Antioch Review, Poetry Northwest, Mademoiselle, Poetry Now, Iowa Review, New Letters, and the New York Times. In 1999, Sears was awarded the Stewart H. Holbrook Award from Literary Arts, Inc. Today he remains an instrumental part to the writing community throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Part 1 of our interview focuses on education, while Part 2 focuses on Peter’s writing, and will appear later in 2009.

(DJ): Did you have a class yesterday?

(PS): It’s a basic comp course at PCC (Portland Community College). Most of the kids are 18, 19. There are some vets in there. I asked one of the guys what he came out as. He said, “Spec 5.” So did I. The difference is he was in the infantry in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I basically went to southern Germany and Berlin. I mean, I lived like a king compared to this poor guy. He didn’t mind.

It’s a required course. About a third of the students are almost too good to be there. The ones at the bottom don’t know what a sentence is. They try, but cognitively they can’t get ahold of it, or they never got it. They’ve never done any writing, they didn’t get proper grammar in high school, they don’t read, or they didn’t read. So now they’re semi-illiterate. They’re nice, they’re quite bright, they work hard, but it’s hard for them. If they get a C they’re going to be lucky. It’s not their fault. They didn’t have it in school. That’s the range. Then there’s a bunch in the middle who are sort of OK.

(DJ): No creative writing?

(PS): No. The first assignment I used a Ray Carver poem, “The Car”. Each student reads a line. They write their own ‘car’, ‘house’, or something, whatever it is. The actual writing assignment is to transpose the creative start to an essay. Essentially, make full sentences out of each of these phrases. A good fifth of the class flunked. They couldn’t do it. I let them make that up, but we had to get further into it. I’ve spent more time than the class really allows for getting into grammar, sentence structure and things like that.

(DJ): Does it frustrate you?

(PS): I like to teach. This is the real world. It’s not like graduate students. One guy tells me about sales meetings he has to go to. One guy can’t make it because his kid’s sick….

(DJ): So teaching comp vs. teaching poetry…

(PS): I was in teaching a lot longer than I was in writing, professionally speaking. In the last few years I’ve realized that teaching is a lot harder than writing is. It’s a lot more important. It just isn’t credited in our society. I wanted to get back in it in the real way. Not just doing creative writing classes. They’re fun, but they’re kind of specialized. They’re not the real world.

I did a residency out in Fossil and Condon (small towns in north-central Oregon). That was the breakthrough for me. I mean, Fossil has 450 people in it, and the population is going down. There are 28 students in the entire high school. It’s really out there. I was trying to get someone out at both schools, but then I took it. The kids only go four-days a week because there aren’t enough students to warrant otherwise – they get enough instruction time. That kept me sane. I’d drive back here on Friday mornings.

I went out there with the understanding, or I told the school, that I needed two things. The teacher would be in the room with me to keep control of the kids. Secondly, the students wouldn’t be graded. Not only that, but if they didn’t want to do something they didn’t have to. It would be my challenge to keep it interesting. The kids were astounded. They were the children of ranchers. These people were serious, they didn’t mess around. One bad year and they were out of business. And it was a challenge, but because of that openness, it made the teaching much more interesting.

(DJ): When was this?

(PS): Two years ago. I was only six-months off chemo. It turned out, being in a dry climate was just what I needed. I’d go for a walk in the afternoon. I couldn’t go in the evening because they had cougars.

(DJ): Cougars?

(PS): Someone said, ‘Do not go for a walk at dusk around here.’ I didn’t see one. They told me it was true.

(DJ): Any poems from this period?

(PS): A few. One about wind turbines. It’s OK but not great. I’d like to get the cougars in some.

(DJ): And the kids liked the class?

(PS): I had them do poetry, personal essay prose, short story writing and playwriting. We did four pieces in four weeks. Then we did a show for the students at both schools. People were like, “You’re not going to get these people to come to some show.” Their teacher told me to give her a list of students that I wanted to read, and she’d work on the families. First she told the students, gave them a certificate and made a big deal out of it. Of course none of them wanted to do it. Peer pressure. They weren’t going to stand up and read in front of a bunch of people.

So she calls the parents up and tells them, “You know, Mr. Sears wants Johnny to be in this show, but that’s not why I’m calling.” And so on. The parents would cut in and say things like, “What’s this about some show?’ The teacher was great. She’d say, ‘Well, Johnny doesn’t want to do it, and Mr. Sears isn’t going to force students to participate. And the parents are like, “We’ll get Johnny to do it.”

Soon the show becomes the thing to do. Suddenly kids who hadn’t written jack come up to me and say they want to be in it. I tell them they didn’t write anything and they say, “Yeah, but I didn’t know there was going to be a show.” Stuff like that.

The show was monumental. All the families were going screwy, chanting and hollering. The guy who owned the theater never sold so much popcorn in his life. It went right to Fishtrap (the funder) and their board, then it went right to the community foundation, then right to the NEA. This is exactly the type of thing they like.

(DJ): When you create something like that, don’t you think it creates the desire to continue when you’re gone?

(PS): God yeah. The grant is still going on. It’s in its last year now. It was a big event, but it came along because of the teacher. The committee didn’t know what to do but the teacher was great. Just one of those things where it hits.

Teaching out there was as rewarding and meaningful as any teaching I’ve done. I’ve taught at a lot of places. And when I came back I wanted to do a comp class. And I’d like to do more. Working with teachers through Community of Writers is also very important to me. I like to stay engaged. Plus from a practical standpoint, it’s reliable.

Remember, I’m 71. To be working at my age in any field is really a great benefit. People my age do some consulting work, things like that, but they’re kind of pushed off to the side. So I feel very fortunate. I also think it helps my writing a lot. My writing’s gotten better.

(DJ): I was going to ask…

(PS): It really has.

(DJ): If you were cloistered away, not working…I can’t imagine that being your day.

(PS): No, I couldn’t do it. I like to be out there. I like the contrast. It’s healthy. If I was around my house all the time, just me and the cat and the washing machine, I’d go nuts. I’m lucky to be teaching and I’d like to do more of it.

Peter Sears is the author of two books of poems, The Brink and Tour, New & Selected Poems. He received his M.F.A. from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and is the 1999 winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Contest. He currently teaches in the M.F.A. program at Pacific University. The following poems come from his most recent chapbook, Luge. .

Luge

I love snow, long gone now from the valley,
but still patching and striping the Cascade
mountains and, beyond the front range, the
white triangle of Three-Fingered Jack shining.
Makes me want to try out for luge. They hold
tryouts around the country – who knows,
there might be a senior circuit. I love the high
banking in the turns as if the luge is going to
shoot off the track. Perfect for me: push off
and pray. The motion at the start when you grip
the handles and swing back and forth in place,
that I can already do. I do it on the floor with
my cat, watching a ball game. I can learn how
to lie back down once I push off. I’m not sure
whether you steer with your hands or with
your feet. How do you hold on, though, through
the tunnel racket and see where you’re going?
If you look up, you lose speed. If you don’t
look up, you could go over a bank into a tree.
Then again, if you must go, it’s not bad, as
long as you go all the way out. Otherwise,
you’re farmed out to a faux old country-club;
you are the third guy in the second row of
rockers on the front porch, rocking gently
—there are speed limits—but you are no
trouble maker, you take your meds smiling
off the tray in your own plastic cup, and you
don’t swear or do those mating calls any more.
Your baseball cap, you pull it own because
your face has become a little pocky from too
much sun as a kid. It looks like you walked in
the wrong door of a tavern dart contest.

Dear Giant Squid

This is a fan letter. I don’t care what the Japanese scientists say,
I saw them on TV getting all excited about how they have photos
of you and almost caught you by dropping juicy bait down to
the creepy depths where you live, along with a fancy camera.
Next time, eat the camera. Their footage shows you approaching
the bait and taking it and getting caught, then dragging the line
up and down, around and around. When you finally ripped yourself
free, you lost a tentacle, which they dangled on a post as if
they had been down there fighting you with their bare hands.
What a joke! You would have wrapped them – right? – and popped
their eyeballs out. So now you know they won’t quit until they
get you. They will scrounge more money and more cameras
and more bait and more boats because that is the way
humans are, most all of them some of the time and some of
them all of the time. So you had better head down, way down,
and don’t wise off and try to take on some whale. A drawing
in a book when I was a kid showed a whale as black as the black
sea it dove down through, with its jaws open over most
of the tentacles of a giant squid, just like you, and the whale’s
eye right up next to the giant squid’s eye. Made me sick,
I turned the page, then turned back, I couldn’t help it,
those jaws closing on so many tentacles, about to chop them
like so much spaghetti. That’s how we humans are, bloodthirsty,
even when we are young and small and not so mean yet.
There is a lot about us not to like. The scientists won’t rest
until they lift you breathless out of the water and lower you
into a cage, take lots of measurements, speak in low, earnest
voices to the eager public, and shake hands all around.

Dream of Following
     with a nod to David Romtvedt

I am following my father and mother,
following them although I don’t much like
the idea, and I don’t much like

that the distance to them grows smaller,
so small I’m catching up to them. You’d think
we’d have much to say to one another.

We don’t. My father motions me
to look back over my shoulder.
There’s my daughter following me.

That’s mean of him. I want to hail her,
tell her to slow down.
But I don’t. I turn back, they’re gone.